OK, fair enough, welcome job growth has occurred on his watch, although some of that 177,700 gain came in the year before he was elected.

What he did not include in his speech was the official Michigan unemployment rate -- and its puzzling swings over the past two years.

In January 2011 when Snyder took office, Michigan's jobless rate was 10.9%, well above the U.S. average of 9.1% and the rates of our six neighboring Great Lakes states, which ranged from 6.8% in Minnesota to 9.4% in Illinois.

Fifteen months later, by April 2012, Michigan's jobless rate had shrunk to 8.3%, close to the national average of 8.1% -- and our drop of 2.6 percentage points in that time was far better than any of our neighbors. In fact, we had a lower jobless rate than Illinois for about eight months.

That was the good news.

Here's the not so good.

Since April, Michigan's job growth has stalled and the unemployment rate edged upward to 8.9% in December, while the U.S. jobless rate has dropped to 7.8% -- and all of our neighboring states' numbers are better.

Is he worried about that?

"We've come a long way," Snyder insisted during an interview with the Free Press editorial board Thursday. "We're not as good as the other states, but we've improved a huge amount from the low point ... Economic development is not an overnight thing, either."

I also talked Thursday with Michael Finney, president of the Michigan Economic Development Corp., and he echoed Snyder's assessment. "There's not a silver bullet, but we're building momentum," Finney said.

The state has a good pipeline of job-creating expansion projects awaiting approval of incentives by the Michigan Strategic Fund in the next two months, he added.

At the Detroit auto show in Cobo Center this week, auto supplier Denso indicated that it's planning job-creating new investments soon.

Halfway through his first term, Snyder's at a key inflection point. After the past eight months of lethargic growth and heated lame-duck battles last month on right-to-work and other issues, Snyder needs to regain positive traction on jobs.

He can't afford two years of sideways results on the economy and jobs if he intends to seek re-election in 2014, which he strongly hinted Thursday that he will.

"This position's important to me. It's an honor. I've got a finite amount of time to really set a foundation so other people can come in and not have to deal with 44 years of cleanup," he said, referring to the state's long economic downslide.